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| Format | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author, Analytic | Van Ness, Silke |
| Title, Analytic | The Pressure of English on the Pennsylvania German Spoken in Two West Virginia Communities |
| Journal Title | American Speech |
| Date of Publication | Spring 1992 |
| Volume ID | 67 |
| Issue ID | 1 |
| Location in Work | 71-82, tables |
| View Online | |
| Abstract | The eleven informants interviewed for this study represent close to the entire German-speaking population in these two speech communities. Since the youngest informant is 58 years old and only one has passed on the language to her child, it is evident that Pennsylvania German is facing extinction. While a few isolated speakers in other parts of [Pendleton] County may not have been detected, Sugar Grove and Propst Gap historically have been considered the strongholds of PG. One innovation, however, that sets the PG of West Virginia apart from other areas in the United States and Canada where the language is still spoken is a phonological change in the past participle prefix. Not only does this variant form show a precipitous increase over a 25 year span, but during the same time period it has spread to a neighboring speech community which had previously maintained the standard pronunciation. The ge- to de- shift was triggered when the "outside" (English-speaking) world invaded these family networks at an accelerated rate via television, compulsory education, and employment away from home. Such external factors were ultimately responsible for imposing English phonotactics on the dialect, thereby causing confluence of the normalized PG PP prefix ge- with a congruent English participial pattern. |
| Notes | Includes bibliographical notes and references. |
| Call Number | Digital file (PDF) |
| MKI Terms | Languages in contact/ Language shift/ Pennsylvania German/ Linguistics/ German Americans -- West Virginia |